Tip of the iceberg.

It's late and I'm getting more tired by the minute, but this line of questioning was born out of a discussion started between Courtney and myself tonight. Expect much more of this in ensuing days.

Well, okay, technically this all started with one question and kind of snowballed from there. The initial question which she posed to me was who my favorite super hero is, other than Batman. If you read this blog, you probably already know the depths of my bat-obsession (or Bat-session, as I sometimes call it) so that should make the reason for this one qualification obvious. I couldn't immediately answer the question, mainly because I had to take soooo much into account. This, however, led to another interesting question: how do you define a super hero? Technically, there is nothing "super" about Batman, since he is just a mortal like anyone else and has no outside help or powers. This is, of course, much of what makes him so damn cool, but that's not the point. When taking the question into mind, you have to consider a spectrum of a least five types of origins for heroes:

1) Vigilante (no power): Like Batman or The Punisher, even Iron Man, these are otherwise unmiraculous joes who by some usually tragic event turn to crime fighting (or crime, depending on which side they're on), most commonly with some amount of cool weaponry and technology. They are not "super" by nature, but do some pretty damn super stuff.

2) Acquired powers: Spider Man, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four - these are the folks who have had something (usually connected to radiation for some reason) happen to them that has led them to become super-powered. These are once-ordinary people who have developed something that makes them super and then used it to benefit (or harm) the world around them.

3) Innate powers: Folks like most all the "X" teams, The Silver Surfer, or even Warlock were all born or created with their powers intact. Some control them better than others, but that's not the point, the point is they started super and they will always be super.

4) Discovery of Object: Thor's hammer, Ghost Rider's motorcycle, DarkHawk's amulet - all these folks were just normal unassuming folks until they stumbled across some sort of artifact that transformed them or gave them superhuman powers.

5) Cosmic beings: Galactus, Superman, Thanos, The In-Betweener -- these people have some sort of other-worldly origins, and are therefore superior in some way or another to regular human folk.

So where does one draw the line? Can it be said that The Punisher, a gun-toting vigilante is any more or less "super" than someone like Galactus, who eats planets for fun and floats around outer space all the time?
Speaking of Galactus... for people who are even nerdier than I am, here's your shirt.

More comic geekery to come....